April 2007 Google SERP Changes

[madmatt69]

< continued from [webmasterworld.com...] >

So yesterday I had decent traffic for the first time in a few weeks - today it's the lowest i've ever seen it. Like since launching it 4 years ago.

No clue why...Can't put my finger on it at all.

[edited by: tedster at 5:42 pm (utc) on April 1, 2007]

[300m]

Data refreshes would not cause what I see. This seems different. Thats not to say that I am not wrong about it, I very much would rather it be a data refresh because trended data for me says that a data refresh would take less time to recover.

[skyewalk]

Link: on google only shows a tiny sample of backlinks and this has been the case for years.

Webmaster tools shows lots more but isn't updated very often.

None of this has anything to do with SERPs changes...

[foxtunes]

".....Link: on google only shows a tiny sample of backlinks and this has been the case for years....."

I know that, but it will only let me click through to page 4 when last week I could go as far as page 30.

[300m]

"Link: on google only shows a tiny sample of backlinks and this has been the case for years. "

I agree and know that, but with me, its link sample is much lower than it was, oh say yesterday, last week, last months and so on.

Links do affect serps and when Google starts to play with them things happen ;)

I beleive many people stated recently that the George Bush "failure" bowling thing was back, so that would tell me even more so that links may be getting some kind of tweak.

[foxtunes]

Yes I see the Whitehouse is again listed 1 for the keyword failure.

Anyone affected added large amounts of new content recently, or gained a lot of new inbounds over a short period of time?

[edited by: foxtunes at 2:47 pm (utc) on April 10, 2007]

[skyewalk]

A couple of days ago on link: I was looking at results 31- 39 of about 8 for one of my sites.

The command is totally wierd.

But something is going on.

[300m]

"gained a lot of new inbounds over a short period of time?"

Sort of, not very recently. but a few months ago we were getting a higher than normal amount of links than normal.

[skyewalk]

I've had a fair number of inbounds, but I doubt they use common anchor text (apart from ones using my URL)

I've also added quite a lot of content, but this is all unique and handwritten (therefore, tens of pages, not thousands)

The whitehouse 'failure' thing - does this mean google is perhaps using old links or something? This could explain alot for me.

But then maybe it's just that Bush has used the word 'failure' on his page in a speech, and its that version of the page that is currently in google cache, which prevents the googlebomb fix from realising its a googlebomb.

That or Google has realised that site really is the most relevant result for 'failure' at last.

[300m]

"That or Google has realised that site really is the most relevant result for 'failure' at last."

hehe

[skyewalk]

Just been checking out link:

It is showing old data today. The links shown don't correspond to the links in the caches of the webpages listed, as the caches are much newer snapshots than the ones used for generating the link:

Is that usually the case?

[supermanu]

gehrlekrona:

My content has very few changes over the last year (maybe max 2% of changes for the entire website)

[rubenski]

My Google traffic has decreased with 65% overnight on march 7. Just today I saw that many of my pages have regained their position in Google for important keywords and Google traffic is way up again. Has anyone else experienced these positive changes? I hope it stays this way.

[lordpercy]

Yes march 6th / 7th killed my main site and by the looks of a traffic graph something has switched back on at the big G. Not quite back where we were but the tap is back open again!

[sahm]

Much of my Google traffic has returned today also. Before March 7, I averaged 6,000 hits a day from Google, after March 7 it was 600. Today so far it is 3,500+. Many of my main key words are ranking in the top 10 again. I was hit by the 950 penalty...I had one key word remain at #1, and that keyword is part of my domain name. As far as changes to my site, I have enhanced the navigational menu on different sections of my site to be more specific to those sections, with more key words in the menu. Google seems to have accepted these changes for now. I also removed all interlinking between my web sites.

[rubenski]

@lordpercy, sahm. I don't receive as much traffic from Google as I used to, but it is certainly a great improvement compared to the 65% drop I experienced since march 6th/7th. I'll have to monitor my stats a couple of days to decide how much of my Google traffic has actually returned. I have only checked my top keywords that used to rank first and they all rank between first and fourth now.

Sahm, I didn't change anything to my site so I wouldn't be too sure your changes have caused your pages to regain their positions.

Let's just hope this is the end of the rollercoaster ride!

[ecommerceprofit]

We were number one for a good keyword for a longgg time - on computer at home with cable modem we still show up - at work we do not however sometimes it shows up - on the google dance tool we are doing bad in the datacenters but great on ip addresses

[nippi]

The google bomb "miserable fialure" to the whitehouse is not working again, however, as there are so many inbound links with the anchor miserable FAILURE(eg, with the word failure in it)... as long as the word "failure" appears on the whitehouse page, it will rank well for

"failure"

I would LOVE to see someone writing on the Whitehouse site words to the effect.

"Our troops are having a miserable time in Iraq, by any analysis the campaign should be seen as a failure... etc etc"

and we'd see the site come back to No.1 for miserable failure!

[Robert Charlton]

"failure"

Actually, the White House presidential bio is back at #1 for the one-word search failure, but it's not a change in the Google algo. The White House used the word to attack Congress... pretty funny after someone went to all the trouble to move the bio from the Bush bio page to whitehouse.gov/president/ ...and all those links kicked in big time.

The bottom line is this: Congress's failure to fund our troops on the front lines will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their ...

They didn't use the word miserable, though, and [miserable failure] doesn't show up in the top 1000.

[offroadvietnam]

Anyone see new sites showed up and disappeared in just two days? I saw some of our competitors' sites this way. They are all new sites. I think the dance still continues, last time it took about 10 days I think. I also noted that changes to pages don't make any sense here.

[skyewalk]

I'm back in again today, apart from one keyword.

Seems to alternate almost every day at the moment.

[itloc]

puuuff - and all gone...

Looks like a megaflux again. Just when I was ready to drop everything they sent me the old amount of traffic for 14 or 15 hours...

Seems to be gone ...

itloc

[Thaparian]

My site lost all if its rankings on 22nd March, and regained all those rankings for all phrases back yesterday, about 24 hrs ago. Now again rankings are gone.

My rankings were good for exact 24 hrs.

Is Google experimenting something or what?

Anyone else saw these changes?

[itloc]

@ Thaparian

In my opinion there happened the same as in January / February when they launched the first "megaflux".

A filter has been lifted to collect comparative data. Saw this yesterday all over the datacenters.

This time I also checked competitors sites - and some of them reacted exactly the same way (up and down in app. 24 hrs.) - altough they are built in an entirely different way, have different html structures, different navigations etc. - it's the same industry. Some of these sites are quiet spammy and being put in the same basket with them is not very encouraging...

It is quiet easy to interpret what this flux means (IMHO) - and I do repeat what I have said in January / February: this flux is there to filter out sites and to check how successful the filters are. What else?

Any further comments about the quality of the filtering, the negative impact it has on the quality of the serps etc. etc. is unfortunately completely fruitless.

They want it that way and they shall have it...

Regards

itloc

[supermanu]

@ Thaparian

Same for me 22nd of march... website disappeared
Back yesterday only

Now the website is still on and I very hope it will stick like this...
I keep you updated

This situation is terrible... if legitimate sites are dropped without reason where does Google go?

[foxtunes]

One of my major sites disappeared yesterday still not back, 95 percent google traffic lost.

One thing I have noticed is that this site is dealing with keywords worth a solid chunk of change - 30cents -1 dollar if you purchase traffic on adwords. I am involved in a few other sites that haven't been touched, but the cpc on adwords for these keywords is only 3-5 cents.

If I was cynical I'd say google want us to increase our adwords spend on sites that compete in profitable markets :)

But I'm going to wait it out for another week before hitting the panic button. Google has been good to me and it's free traffic after all. Plus I'm still getting hits from msn, yahoo and links.

[StarryEyed]

I'm seeing an "every other day" pattern...my site has been high in the serps for the last 8 months for my three main search terms, up until late on April 7...then completely removed from the serps in all data centers except www.google.com, for all but one search term by the morning of the 8th. This lasted 24 hours and my traffic slowed to a trickle(so did my adsense revenue). Then I was magically back in the serps in my old position for all search terms on the 9th. My traffic roared back - ka-ching! Then I was out again on the 9th...in on the 10th and now out again today...Some of my competition appears to be experiencing the same pattern- in one day out the next.

I've never experienced this sort of flux before.The old patteren was in for 6 months- then out for six months..now that I was in for 8 months I thought maybe I'd be in for a whole 12 months. I was wrong.

I don't think I should make any changes to anything- feels like a sit back and wait situation...but I really don't understand what kind of filter it could be. Something tells me that this kind of flux doesn't bode well for my site... :(

[300m]

I think we will see rise and fall scenarios reularly for the month.

[foxtunes]

Check your index pages in google, are they cached? I noticed the homepage for my affected site no longer has a cache. It still appears in the index for minor keywords and has a PR of 6 but no cache. Yet all internal pages are still cached.

[Crush]

same same foxtunes. Index page gone.

[300m]

All pages for me are cached, including the home page. I hate to ask, but whats the IP for the missing cached home page? Mine is 209.85.165.104 .